Since I switched to Flickr for hosting my photos I’ve used the Awesome Flickr Gallery WordPress plugin to embed photos in posts. To be precise I used a different version which works with the responsive theme on my weblog, because the original plugin is no longer in active development. But I wasn’t satisfied with the complexity this plugin introduced. So I switched to Flickr’s own embedding functionality. Flickr made some changes to how their photos can be embedded in December 2013. As of now, photos can be embedded with the “HTML” or the “Embed” options. The first method is the simplest way to embed without extra features. The second method shows an overlay on the photo (on mouseover) which allows you to move back or forward in the photostream. Compare:
The embed option has two problems. If you use a smartphone to read my blog, you will notice huge black bars as the photo is scaled down. Also, with the overlay you scroll through the entire Flickr photostream. You can’t exclude unrelated photos, for example by only showing photos with a specific tag. This means I’ll have to use the HTML option. It surprises me that Flickr didn’t anticipate that their users desire such a feature. I hope Flickr can implement a feature to control which photos are shown with the Embed option. I’ve posted a feature request for it on Flickr Ideas.